Hardheaded!

Have you ever been called hardheaded, stubborn or unchanging?  I can be all of these, wrapped into one - on occasion!  But I also know a few of those hardheaded types and they can leave this cheerleader speechless!  This year as I have focused on the word new, I thought it was going to be so refreshing and all shiny and, well – new.  But, the more I desire new, the more I am reminded of all the changes that are required for new.

I would love to get started on writing a new book, but that would require a change in my daily schedule.  One of my desires is to encourage others to become healthy through personal training, but that would require additional hours a day for study for a new certification.  I would love a new kitchen, but I would need to write the new book and start training people in order to afford it!  There are some things I would like renewed in my life as well.   I would like to become a better teacher, friend, student, and speaker.  All these require change.  Change also requires accountability.

For over five years I was a part of an accountability group.  There were six of us women who gathered weekly to share honestly and openly in a safe and secure environment. We shared blessings, temptations, key struggles and areas where God was calling us to go deeper with Him.  This usually meant He was calling us to something new.  It could have been a new habit of encouraging our husbands, speaking truths to our children, or using our time more productively.  We all had times when we struggled with the reality of change.  We needed each other to speak words of encouragement, instruction, or truth over our lives as we sought to reach these new goals. We cried together, prayed together, laughed together, and grew deeper in love with the Lord together.  It has been over a year since we’ve met together and oh how I miss them. I miss the accountability and being spurred on to love and live well.  If we ever showed up hardheaded or stubborn, someone in the group would call us to account!  Instead of fighting it, we welcomed it. 

Let a righteous man strike me – it is a kindness; let him rebuke me – it is oil on my head.  My head will not refuse it.  Psalm 141:5

Jesus is our ultimate Change Agent.  He is all about changing us from the old to the new.  He paid the ultimate price by dying on a cross to provide a new relationship with God.  He gave us not only a new relationship, but a whole new life!

“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”  

Romans 6:4 

My efforts to change on my own fall flat and I fail miserably!  Trying harder just doesn’t seem to work!  Eventually I must lift my hands first in surrender and then in praise of the one who makes all things new.  My efforts are like patching up my holey jeans.  They may be “fixed,” but they are not new!  My husband is such a good steward of his shoes that he will take them to the shoe shop and have them resoled several times before I step in and tell him that it is time for a new pair.  Sometimes doing the same thing over and over again is no longer effective.  It is time for a change!  Its time to walk in the new way.    

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; otherwise the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear results.  No one puts new wine into old wineskins; 

otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; 

but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.”   

Mark 2:21-22

I started the year giddy with excitement for the new that the Lord was going to bring into my life, and my family and friends’ lives.  The excitement has now given way to reality. The reality is I am hardheaded and so are a lot of others I know. That means the only way we are going to experience the excitement of the new is to live the reality of change.  The author of Hebrews has the key that will unlock the stubborn streak in all of us:

Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race marked out for us.                                                                        Hebrews 12:1

The Lord is calling each of us to run a new race, but we have to throw off stubbornness and allow him to strike us with His kindness and welcome His rebuke. He is our Change Agent and He is calling us to account.   

Hands up and hearts open,

Nancy